If this is a trojan, then exactly what piece of legitimate software is it piggybacking on in order to get installed? It sounds to me like it's exploiting a Java vulnerability using an applet that does not disguise itself as something useful, it is specifically to install the payload. That sounds like a traditional virus. Previous versions that were actual trojans were embedded in warez downloads.
C'mon, it's just an example. So let's go ahead and add the AN/APY-8 Lynx II radar, Raytheon SeaVue Marine Search Radar, AN/DAS-1 MTS-B Multi-Spectral Targeting System, and whatever else is crammed in here:
Maybe because you can't power an infrared camera array and laser sighting with a hot air balloon. They also tend to be a bit slow, and easy to shoot. In fact, if the military was proposing a hot air balloon surveillance platform with a multi-month endurance, I would be asking "why use lighter-than-air when you can go nuclear instead?"
I appreciate the fact that the statement "Only the computer nerds differentiate between viruses, trojans, and malware you get by clicking on something on the internet." results in a serious explanation of the similarities and differences of viruses and trojans. This is one of those little things that lets me know I'm on the right site.
There are over 100 million Macs in use in the world*. So what we have here is some random Russian anti-virus firm is claiming that 0.6% of them are infected with a trojan due to a vulnerability in Oracle's Java engine (for which Apple has already sent out an update to patch the vulnerability). And that Russian firm would love to sell you the cure.
So all of that dirty Rusky business is bullshit, but you're going to claim as fact that "there are over 100 million Macs in use" based on an unsubstantiated "answer" to a question which cites an estimate by Apple and an assumption that says there "could be" "up to" 100 million. So you see "could be up to 100 million", and you change that to "there are over 100 million". Right.
Anyway, who the hell tried to claim that Macs are just as unsafe as PCs? I don't see any technical reason why they wouldn't be, but that claim certainly wasn't made in the post you're replying to. Did you reply to the wrong post?
600,000 computers didn't get infected because someone downloaded some pirated software loaded with the malware. This is not the DevilRobber trojan, this is Flashback. The Java vulnerabilities used to download and run the virus are exploited via the good old drive-by-download method, which does not require user interaction (thanks, Java!).
According to the Dr Web blog posting, “systems get infected with BackDoor.Flashback.39 after a user is redirected to a bogus site from a compromised resource or via a traffic distribution system. JavaScript code is used to load a Java-applet containing an exploit.”
This is the exact same method that Windows machines get infected. The top 3 infection vectors are Java, Acrobat, and Flash because all 3 of them will load whatever the server tells them to in a hidden iframe if necessary. Vulnerabilities in IE itself account for less than 10 percent of Windows infections, the vast majority are from insecure third-party browser plugins. Those plugins do not all of a sudden become secure, and the vendors don't all of a sudden start using good security practices, just because the target OS runs on Apple-branded hardware.
Well I don't know how many copies they actually sold to get to $300 million revenue, maybe they only sold 1 million copies at $300 each (although the one I bought for my PC was cheaper). I imagine that the majority of their sales occurred through Steam. Regardless, apparently they managed $300 million in revenue and 5 million units shipped without selling even 2 million console copies. And people claim PC gaming is dying...
It sounds to me like the games industry is starting to follow all of the practices that are making the RIAA so successful today. There is an unnecessary amount of politics and overhead involved, I never understood the role of a video game publisher and still don't think they're necessary. I don't see a reason why the developer would not also publish the game that they developed. I just have a hard time imagining why a game should need $100 million to be made (although from what I can find, only GTA4 reached the $100 million mark, and sold 22+ million copies; at $50 each that's $1.1 billion). Doom cost $200,000 to be made and at the time was very expensive (roughly $300k today), and Doom was revolutionary.
And funny that you cite Fallout: New Vegas, but Obsidian just ended up laying off 30 people. The owner of the company hasn't taken any salary in over six months and they're fighting bankruptcy. But surely, they're making too much money and should lay off the rest of their staff.
I can't comment on the organization or management of the company, but if they're having problems making $300 million last for 2 years then maybe there are other issues going on other than the cost of development. Or, to put that another way, I have a hard time believing that New Vegas is the reason for Obsidian's troubles.
When I look at a practical business model, I'm assuming a relatively low budget ($20 million as opposed to $100 million for titles like Max Payne 3) but also assuming I'm not selling 1 million copies.
Citing $20 million as a relatively low budget is sort of stretching the meaning of "low". Speaking of Brian Fargo, I'm sure you're aware of Wasteland 2. He said he could develop that game for $900k, and with the $2 million he has now he's saying he can also port it to 3 platforms. So why does a company need to spend $20 million? What are they spending it on? And $100 million for a game? How many developers does it take to make a game? I'm not arguing the fact that companies actually spend that much money, I'm trying to suggest that they could do it for much less. It's like the stories we occasionally see where the government paid out several million dollars for someone to develop what is essentially a database-driven web site and every developer here wondering where that money goes. Just because they budget and spend that much doesn't mean that they need to in order to get what they want.
You want another example? How about Minecraft? It's sold over 5 million copies. What do you think the 1 developer budgeted for that, do you think he spent $20 million building that game? There's a mindset, not only in game development, that huge big-budget productions are the only way to make large amounts of money, and that's not really the case. Look at Portal, for example.
Budgets on games are going through the roof. You need $20 million to put together a AAA title these days, with some games costing $100 million to make.... $60 isn't ridiculous when you look at it.
First, I'd like to see some citations on that first claim on how much it takes to produce a major title, or whatever your definition of "AAA" is. Second, let's look at the some real numbers. Skyrim shipped 7 million units in the first week of its release (yeah, an average of a million units a day). At $60 a pop, that works out to $420 million in one week (actual figures claim $450 million). By Dec. 16, a little over a month after release, that had grown to 10 million copies shipped and about $620 million in sales. It sounds to me like they could have put the price at $20 or $30 and still made a killing, and possibly would have even doubled their units sold.
It can be hard to find specific numbers for arbitrary games, but it looks like Fallout New Vegas sold about 5 million copies for $300 million about 3 weeks after it was released. 1997's Age of Empires has sold over 3 million copies. The original Halo has sold over 5 million copies. By the end of 2008 the original Half-Life had sold over 9 million copies, how much do you think it took to develop that?
Console makers realize people aren't going to go for required always-on internet, lockout of online play beyond the original owner, or the various other schemes they have tried to keep people other than the original purchaser from using physical media.
Wait, if console makers realize that, then why are they moving towards required always-on internet, lockout of online play beyond the original owner, and the various other schemes they have tried to keep people other than the original purchaser from using physical media?
I mean, if consumers don't want those things, and console makers realize that consumers don't want those things, then why are they going out of their way to implement them?
If they want to move to an online distribution model then they need to make it easy to use and access, have low restrictions, and make the prices slightly cheaper. That's all they need to do, they don't need to require an internet connection or associate physical media with specific consoles.
What was made public about the ship, that she was a Japanese fishing trawler, that she was swept out to sea in a tsunami and was lost... none of that is true. The ship was a secret government project to create a fishing trawler capable of faster-than-light travel. The ship doesn't really go faster than light. It creates a gateway to jump instantaneously from one point to another oceans away. It's called a gravity drive. I built it.
The mission was going perfectly, they reached safe distance using conventional engines. They had the go-ahead to use the gravity drive and open the gateway to Antarctic whaling waters. And then, they just disappeared, vanished without a trace.
I would actually argue that this is something along the lines of what Zuckerberg had as a vision for Facebook, letting people hook up with people around them. He wasn't as blatant about it, but I think it serves the same purpose. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me at all if when you check in on Facebook that it would show you other people who have recently checked in near you (it may already do that, I've never "checked in").
I just don't see anything creepy about getting a list of everyone around you with information about them that they made public. It seems like a natural progression, actually. If people have certain details publicly available, and they also publicly check in to places where they are, then why not join the two? See a list of everyone who has checked in around you, it makes perfect sense. It would also be a great new way to meet people in a bar, you see a girl on her phone and you jump on and find out who she is based on pictures and send her a flirtatious message on Facebook. This just seems like a natural progression between social networks, location services, and dating sites - real time information about the people who are actually around you who also want to meet other people. I frankly don't see what problem people have with this, and I also don't understand what TOS were violated for Foursquare.
It also may screw up a potential idea for an app I'm working on. Bah.
The issue with a lot of people isnt that their info is unknowingly public, its that someone is has sought you out and knows some things about you and you're wondering from where and what else does this person know.
Why is that an issue? Here are the answers - they got the information from Facebook, and they know whatever else you say about your daily life or post in your profile.
Here's an example - I'm friends with a girl on Facebook that I haven't seen in about 15 years, and I know her middle name, birthday, son's name, school history, current work situation, relationship status, where she ate last week, etc. Not because I actively seek it out, but because she posts an update when she does goddamn anything. If she's creeped out that I know all those things then she's probably pretty stupid. It would be pretty funny to run into her on the street and start spouting off all these facts about her life though, I would like to see the look on her face. If narcissistic people like that are surprised that other people know all the stuff that they constantly post about themselves then they have no one to blame but themselves.
I also don't really see anything creepy about my behavior there. I think it's a little creepy and suspect that she feels compelled to tell the world that she ate at Firehouse Subs last weekend, not the fact that I remember odd bits of information.
What, like Opera? Tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, speed dial, several other things that later browsers copied. Those only became features once someone created an extension for them in Firefox, right?
Have you looked at a vanilla install of Firefox? Compare that with Opera and the number of features in Firefox is pretty much approaching zero.
If the only thing you want to compare is plugins or add-ons, instead of actual browser features, then you should look at things like this, this, and this to avoid making yourself appear uninformed in the future.
Of course, you don't have to worry about having any features then, either.
Great gobs of gooseshit, you're telling me that Firefox is the only browser that contains features? My god man, I had no idea. Tell me, is it also the only software program in general to support "features"? Don't keep this knowledge to yourself, the world needs to know! Wake up, sheeple!
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This doesn't have anything to do with Javascript, Javascript is not a plugin. This affects plugins like Flash, Java, and Silverlight.
That commercial has some great lines. "I could never buy a Samsung, I'm creative."
It's not their fault if they think different.
OS X has what, TWO viruses now?
Wow, they sure are creeping up to the millions on Windows platforms.
Enjoy it while you can, arguments like that have their days numbered.
If this is a trojan, then exactly what piece of legitimate software is it piggybacking on in order to get installed? It sounds to me like it's exploiting a Java vulnerability using an applet that does not disguise itself as something useful, it is specifically to install the payload. That sounds like a traditional virus. Previous versions that were actual trojans were embedded in warez downloads.
C'mon, it's just an example. So let's go ahead and add the AN/APY-8 Lynx II radar, Raytheon SeaVue Marine Search Radar, AN/DAS-1 MTS-B Multi-Spectral Targeting System, and whatever else is crammed in here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MQ-9_Reaper_Satcom.jpg
How much power do you think it takes to run those packages 24 hours a day?
Maybe because you can't power an infrared camera array and laser sighting with a hot air balloon. They also tend to be a bit slow, and easy to shoot. In fact, if the military was proposing a hot air balloon surveillance platform with a multi-month endurance, I would be asking "why use lighter-than-air when you can go nuclear instead?"
You mean OSX/Leap-A from 2006 isn't technically a virus? Are you going to explain how a worm is not a virus? Or did you just not know?
Java update does it.
No, updating Java does not protect your computer, it just delays the inevitable. Removing Java, Flash, and Acrobat will help protect your computer.
I appreciate the fact that the statement "Only the computer nerds differentiate between viruses, trojans, and malware you get by clicking on something on the internet." results in a serious explanation of the similarities and differences of viruses and trojans. This is one of those little things that lets me know I'm on the right site.
There are over 100 million Macs in use in the world*. So what we have here is some random Russian anti-virus firm is claiming that 0.6% of them are infected with a trojan due to a vulnerability in Oracle's Java engine (for which Apple has already sent out an update to patch the vulnerability). And that Russian firm would love to sell you the cure.
So all of that dirty Rusky business is bullshit, but you're going to claim as fact that "there are over 100 million Macs in use" based on an unsubstantiated "answer" to a question which cites an estimate by Apple and an assumption that says there "could be" "up to" 100 million. So you see "could be up to 100 million", and you change that to "there are over 100 million". Right.
Anyway, who the hell tried to claim that Macs are just as unsafe as PCs? I don't see any technical reason why they wouldn't be, but that claim certainly wasn't made in the post you're replying to. Did you reply to the wrong post?
600,000 computers didn't get infected because someone downloaded some pirated software loaded with the malware. This is not the DevilRobber trojan, this is Flashback. The Java vulnerabilities used to download and run the virus are exploited via the good old drive-by-download method, which does not require user interaction (thanks, Java!).
According to the Dr Web blog posting, “systems get infected with BackDoor.Flashback.39 after a user is redirected to a bogus site from a compromised resource or via a traffic distribution system. JavaScript code is used to load a Java-applet containing an exploit.”
This is the exact same method that Windows machines get infected. The top 3 infection vectors are Java, Acrobat, and Flash because all 3 of them will load whatever the server tells them to in a hidden iframe if necessary. Vulnerabilities in IE itself account for less than 10 percent of Windows infections, the vast majority are from insecure third-party browser plugins. Those plugins do not all of a sudden become secure, and the vendors don't all of a sudden start using good security practices, just because the target OS runs on Apple-branded hardware.
Well I don't know how many copies they actually sold to get to $300 million revenue, maybe they only sold 1 million copies at $300 each (although the one I bought for my PC was cheaper). I imagine that the majority of their sales occurred through Steam. Regardless, apparently they managed $300 million in revenue and 5 million units shipped without selling even 2 million console copies. And people claim PC gaming is dying...
I got the sales figures from the articles from each individual game.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_New_Vegas#Reception
It sounds to me like the games industry is starting to follow all of the practices that are making the RIAA so successful today. There is an unnecessary amount of politics and overhead involved, I never understood the role of a video game publisher and still don't think they're necessary. I don't see a reason why the developer would not also publish the game that they developed. I just have a hard time imagining why a game should need $100 million to be made (although from what I can find, only GTA4 reached the $100 million mark, and sold 22+ million copies; at $50 each that's $1.1 billion). Doom cost $200,000 to be made and at the time was very expensive (roughly $300k today), and Doom was revolutionary.
And funny that you cite Fallout: New Vegas, but Obsidian just ended up laying off 30 people. The owner of the company hasn't taken any salary in over six months and they're fighting bankruptcy. But surely, they're making too much money and should lay off the rest of their staff.
I can't comment on the organization or management of the company, but if they're having problems making $300 million last for 2 years then maybe there are other issues going on other than the cost of development. Or, to put that another way, I have a hard time believing that New Vegas is the reason for Obsidian's troubles.
When I look at a practical business model, I'm assuming a relatively low budget ($20 million as opposed to $100 million for titles like Max Payne 3) but also assuming I'm not selling 1 million copies.
Citing $20 million as a relatively low budget is sort of stretching the meaning of "low". Speaking of Brian Fargo, I'm sure you're aware of Wasteland 2. He said he could develop that game for $900k, and with the $2 million he has now he's saying he can also port it to 3 platforms. So why does a company need to spend $20 million? What are they spending it on? And $100 million for a game? How many developers does it take to make a game? I'm not arguing the fact that companies actually spend that much money, I'm trying to suggest that they could do it for much less. It's like the stories we occasionally see where the government paid out several million dollars for someone to develop what is essentially a database-driven web site and every developer here wondering where that money goes. Just because they budget and spend that much doesn't mean that they need to in order to get what they want.
You want another example? How about Minecraft? It's sold over 5 million copies. What do you think the 1 developer budgeted for that, do you think he spent $20 million building that game? There's a mindset, not only in game development, that huge big-budget productions are the only way to make large amounts of money, and that's not really the case. Look at Portal, for example.
Budgets on games are going through the roof. You need $20 million to put together a AAA title these days, with some games costing $100 million to make. ...
$60 isn't ridiculous when you look at it.
First, I'd like to see some citations on that first claim on how much it takes to produce a major title, or whatever your definition of "AAA" is. Second, let's look at the some real numbers. Skyrim shipped 7 million units in the first week of its release (yeah, an average of a million units a day). At $60 a pop, that works out to $420 million in one week (actual figures claim $450 million). By Dec. 16, a little over a month after release, that had grown to 10 million copies shipped and about $620 million in sales. It sounds to me like they could have put the price at $20 or $30 and still made a killing, and possibly would have even doubled their units sold.
It can be hard to find specific numbers for arbitrary games, but it looks like Fallout New Vegas sold about 5 million copies for $300 million about 3 weeks after it was released. 1997's Age of Empires has sold over 3 million copies. The original Halo has sold over 5 million copies. By the end of 2008 the original Half-Life had sold over 9 million copies, how much do you think it took to develop that?
Console makers realize people aren't going to go for required always-on internet, lockout of online play beyond the original owner, or the various other schemes they have tried to keep people other than the original purchaser from using physical media.
Wait, if console makers realize that, then why are they moving towards required always-on internet, lockout of online play beyond the original owner, and the various other schemes they have tried to keep people other than the original purchaser from using physical media?
I mean, if consumers don't want those things, and console makers realize that consumers don't want those things, then why are they going out of their way to implement them?
If they want to move to an online distribution model then they need to make it easy to use and access, have low restrictions, and make the prices slightly cheaper. That's all they need to do, they don't need to require an internet connection or associate physical media with specific consoles.
You haven't look at the example data set, have you? It looks like IRC logs, and the user names have been replaced with what look like MD5 hashes.
Where's the part where you determine the genders and ages of people from their chat logs?
What was made public about the ship, that she was a Japanese fishing trawler, that she was swept out to sea in a tsunami and was lost... none of that is true. The ship was a secret government project to create a fishing trawler capable of faster-than-light travel. The ship doesn't really go faster than light. It creates a gateway to jump instantaneously from one point to another oceans away. It's called a gravity drive. I built it.
The mission was going perfectly, they reached safe distance using conventional engines. They had the go-ahead to use the gravity drive and open the gateway to Antarctic whaling waters. And then, they just disappeared, vanished without a trace.
Until now.
I would actually argue that this is something along the lines of what Zuckerberg had as a vision for Facebook, letting people hook up with people around them. He wasn't as blatant about it, but I think it serves the same purpose. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me at all if when you check in on Facebook that it would show you other people who have recently checked in near you (it may already do that, I've never "checked in").
I just don't see anything creepy about getting a list of everyone around you with information about them that they made public. It seems like a natural progression, actually. If people have certain details publicly available, and they also publicly check in to places where they are, then why not join the two? See a list of everyone who has checked in around you, it makes perfect sense. It would also be a great new way to meet people in a bar, you see a girl on her phone and you jump on and find out who she is based on pictures and send her a flirtatious message on Facebook. This just seems like a natural progression between social networks, location services, and dating sites - real time information about the people who are actually around you who also want to meet other people. I frankly don't see what problem people have with this, and I also don't understand what TOS were violated for Foursquare.
It also may screw up a potential idea for an app I'm working on. Bah.
The issue with a lot of people isnt that their info is unknowingly public, its that someone is has sought you out and knows some things about you and you're wondering from where and what else does this person know.
Why is that an issue? Here are the answers - they got the information from Facebook, and they know whatever else you say about your daily life or post in your profile.
Here's an example - I'm friends with a girl on Facebook that I haven't seen in about 15 years, and I know her middle name, birthday, son's name, school history, current work situation, relationship status, where she ate last week, etc. Not because I actively seek it out, but because she posts an update when she does goddamn anything. If she's creeped out that I know all those things then she's probably pretty stupid. It would be pretty funny to run into her on the street and start spouting off all these facts about her life though, I would like to see the look on her face. If narcissistic people like that are surprised that other people know all the stuff that they constantly post about themselves then they have no one to blame but themselves.
I also don't really see anything creepy about my behavior there. I think it's a little creepy and suspect that she feels compelled to tell the world that she ate at Firehouse Subs last weekend, not the fact that I remember odd bits of information.
What, like Opera? Tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, speed dial, several other things that later browsers copied. Those only became features once someone created an extension for them in Firefox, right?
Have you looked at a vanilla install of Firefox? Compare that with Opera and the number of features in Firefox is pretty much approaching zero.
If the only thing you want to compare is plugins or add-ons, instead of actual browser features, then you should look at things like this, this, and this to avoid making yourself appear uninformed in the future.
Simple answer - You only officially support the ESR versions, and make your users entirely aware of both that fact, and the "why" behind it.
I see. So sort of like a note somewhere on the page that says "This site looks best in Firefox X". What's old is new again?
Of course, you don't have to worry about having any features then, either.
Great gobs of gooseshit, you're telling me that Firefox is the only browser that contains features? My god man, I had no idea. Tell me, is it also the only software program in general to support "features"? Don't keep this knowledge to yourself, the world needs to know! Wake up, sheeple!